I wish I could be a gold-digger

This has been a good week for gold-diggers - sorry, I mean
the romantically aspirational.

According to a Centre for Policy Studies
survey, an increasing number of British women want to 'marry up',
preferring a rich husband to a career.

In contrast, I have spent so much of my life 'dating down' -
becoming involved with men who expect me to pay for them - that I
feel like a Chilean miner.

The odd thing is that women like myself then
have to listen to their man complain that they feel emasculated.

According to the survey, 38 per cent of females would prefer
to give up work once married but are 'afraid to admit they would rather
be housewives as it is so politically incorrect'.

My advice to these women is to ignore political correctness
altogether; it is always more tyrannical towards those who are
obviously scared of it than towards those who are indifferent.

How I long to 'marry up'.

'You don't earn enough money,'
complained one beau when I asked him to lend me my taxi fare after a
dinner for which I had paid half.

'Can't you walk instead?'

I walked
all right - straight out of his life.

Women desiring wealth may be derided as superficial but I
disagree. A man being rich is like a girl being pretty. You wouldn't
marry a girl just because she is pretty - but it helps.

Why isn't Petronella more popular?

What a disappointment that Petronella has failed to make the list of
the 20 most popular girls' names. Surely Petronella is no weirder than
Trixibelle or Blanket, or whatever celebrities call their children?

One reader emailed me last week asking 'how it felt' to be
called Petronella, as if it was a terminal illness. The only other
Petronella I have heard of uses it as a nom de plume for writing torrid
novels. Then there is the perpolita petronella, a species of snail
described by zoologists as 'a terrestrial gastropod mollusc'.

So why was I named Petronella? My father had a penchant for
ancient history, and settled on the anglicised version of the Roman
name Petronilla.

My elder brother was christened Pericles. But at least
Pericles was a great Athenian statesman and the founder of democracy,
as opposed to a gastropod mollusc.

Oops, there's the phone. Must be David Attenborough again.

Women support the coalition

After conducting a quick straw poll, I discovered that more women than men are in favour of the Coalition.

Is it Clegg's square-jawed looks or Dave's Cary Grant composure?

No.
It's merely that women are less ideological and selfish than men and
therefore more practical and understanding.

Accordingly, we have little time for the bleatings of Right-wing Tories about 'purple' parties, and of Left-wing Lib Dems about everything.

Oh, shut up and lie down in a darkened room.

Dave has to make concessions or the Government would fall.

Clegg can't implement his Election manifesto because he didn't win the Election.

Can't these MPs at least control their anger until times are better?

'The collywobbles'

How boring of Brussels to ban hundreds of herbal medicinal products.

From April, we will be unable to buy ancient remedies such as skullcap for insomnia. Herbal products have afforded me great amusement.

Once, on holiday in Florence, a platonic and rather elderly male friend and I visited a herbal apothecary after he came down with what he referred to as 'the collywobbles' (that's diarrhoea to you and me).

The proprietor produced a jar of tangled grey roots and cackled: 'For problems in the night!'

How clever of the man to have guessed that my friend had spent the previous evening running to the bathroom.

'We'll take the whole jar,' we chorused.

The owner, his voice pregnant with meaning, replied: 'The lady will be very happy!' Suddenly, the thought dawned that he had meant something quite different by 'problems in the night'.

My friend persisted: 'But is it for the collywobbles?'

The proprietor smirked. 'Si, signore, it stops all wobbles!'

The Goldsmiths (above Zac) go their own sweet way

Those Goldsmiths...

The Tory party's enthusiasm for MP Zac Goldsmith must be waning after his rental of the equivalent of the Taj Mahal in Barbados.

But they should have known better than to think a Goldsmith would subscribe to the 'we're all in it together' approach.

The Goldsmiths go their own sweet way, sticking two fingers up to public opinion like their philandering father Sir James.

One of my most embarrassing moments came when I sat next to him at a party.

As his wife, Lady Annabel, looked on, he instructed me to go with him to a nightclub and, before I had time to refuse, frogmarched me out of the room.

Lady Annabel simply smiled and said: 'Have a nice time, dear.'

This made me feel even worse.

Ed Miliband's new campaign

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, is to launch a campaign for the 'lost generation' of young unemployed, whose numbers are apparently increasing.